


The Doormen

by LittleRedPencil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Writing Exercise, creative writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 07:24:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17545262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedPencil/pseuds/LittleRedPencil
Summary: Writing Prompt:Your eccentric great uncle recently died and left you his estate, which includes a rather large house filled with doors that don’t always lead where you’d expect.-------Rooster’s Run was the last thing I expected anyone to name an estate. But to be fair, Uncle Mortimer had made it his life’s mission to do everything the last way anyone would expect. Also his unlife’s mission, if the gasping breaths and moans of shock that surrounded me where anything to go by.





	The Doormen

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a fantasy writing exercise based on a writing prompt. While it is the basis for a future, full-length work, for now I'm busy with fanfics and it's just a nice little exercise of the typing fingers.

**Writing Prompt** :Your eccentric great uncle recently died and left you his estate, which includes a rather large house filled with doors that don’t always lead where you’d expect.

* * *

 Rooster’s Run was the last thing I expected anyone to name an estate. But to be fair, Uncle Mortimer had made it his life’s mission to do everything the last way anyone would expect. Also his unlife’s mission, if the gasping breaths and moans of shock that surrounded me where anything to go by.

”Marissa!” My mother elbowed me in the ribs, hissing through the side of her mouth. “Stop smiling, this is a burial!”

”I’m sorry!” I whispered back as quietly as I could. I still had to be louder than I wanted so I could be heard over some of the more hysterical sobs. “But you gotta admit, Uncle Mort’s big exit was just as dramatic as his entrances. Did you see Aunt Carrie’s face when the glitter cannon went off?”

My mother pursed her lips in that disapproving way she had. Life was serious and death was even more so, there wasn’t time in the middle of all that for things like eccentricity and fun. She managed to look very severe for a woman whose graying hair was dotted with glitter and inappropriately shaped confetti.

I looked from the casket being lowered into the ground—extra large, Uncle Mort’s will had explicitly stated he was to be buried in his favorite suit of armor—to the sheaf of papers in my hand. Mort’s executor had tracked me down at my mother’s house, where I was staying while in town for the funeral, to give me a fat brown envelope this morning.

His home, a sprawling estate hidden in the hills of northern Pennsylvania, now belonged to me. The deed and copy of the will were accompanied by a heavy ring of keys, which I assumed were for the collection of mismatched halls and wings he’d built over the years.

I didn’t know Mortimer Bellkindle very well if I was being honest. He was one of those eccentric relatives, not really my uncle but an uncle’s uncle or something like that. Or maybe he was a few times removed. Maybe he wasn’t related at all and we just called him “uncle” out of respect. But what I did know of him I liked, and I was the only one in the family who didn’t hear his name and shudder.

Mort made his money in the antiques business and had never had time for things like modernity or social convention. At my sixteenth birthday party he’d shown up two hours late in a car that looked like it had just rolled off Henry Ford’s first assembly line, honking a horn that loudly screamed “ah-OOOO-gah!” He’d been wearing a cravat and top hat.

At my high school graduation he’d arrived two hours early, in huge purple bellbottoms with his wispy white hair combed out into an impressive ‘70s afro. He’d had a Russian woman with him who didn’t speak English, and who kept looking at everyone suspiciously and reaching into the jacket of her pantsuit threateningly.

He’d offered time and time again to have me as a guest at Rooster’s Run, and for a long time I’d dreamed of all the strange and wonderful things I would see on a trip out there during summer vacation. But while I was a child my mother had always found an excuse not to let me go, and once I was graduated from college and on my own it seemed like the world had taken up her self-declared duty to keep me away.

I was now 32 years old. I had never been to Rooster’s Run, and I had not seen Uncle Mort in twelve years. But in a way it made sense that I would be the one he’d leave his most precious things; I was the only one in the family who didn’t treat him like a useless joke.

When the prayers were over and we left the cemetery, I went back to my mother’s house where she had invited her sisters over for coffee. I sat in her sunny kitchen and suffered politely through all the questions I was prepared for and some I was not.

How was the job search going? Not so great, the factory had been my one and only job since college and my resume was taking its time to work any magic. How was my relationship? Doing well, Henry was the serious type my mother loved but surely he’d loosen up a little eventually. How was planning the wedding going? An absolute nightmare, the prices for everything were insane. How many children were we thinking of having? None. Yes, that’s right, none. Maybe I will change my mind eventually, who knows?

I soldiered through and survived the day, and the next morning I was packing an overnight bag and flagging down a taxi to the train station. It was a six hour trip out to the middle of nowhere, but I had the time. I also had the fat brown envelope, which had held more than keys and deeds. Once the train pulled out of the station and the world began whipping by outside my window, I took out the envelope and emptied it in my lap.

The little journal that came with it all was battered and worn, barely bigger than my hand. Its brown leather cover was softened with age and its pages were faded and blank. All of them, blank. Except for the first page, which had “Property Of:” written in italic script, with a line below for the owner’s name. “Mr. Mortimer Aloicius Hamilton Bellkindle” was written in Uncle Mort’s scrawl.

Well, it was mine now, along with Rooster’s Run. I took a pen out of my purse and added a line below:

_And Ms. Marissa Sandra Tomlinson_

The blank pages would be an excellent place to document my first trip to Rooster’s Run. I could take notes on anything that needed fixing and reminders on bill due dates. The estate came along with a bank account that belonged to it, like a business, for maintenance and utilities. I would have to look into that.

As I turned the pages to find a fresh, blank one I was more than a little confused. There were no blank pages. But I was certain that couldn’t be, only a moment ago I’d flipped through and found nothing. But now as I turned I found sketches and scribbles and long-winded journal entries. In the beginning, right after the Property Of page, was a page covered in brightly colored borders and elegant calligraphy that I didn’t know how I could have missed. It had a poem, with no title or author:

_Unto a generation, one,_   
_Within each lifetime, two,_   
_Apprentice cries when Teacher dies,_   
_But the Master now is you._   
_When morning ends and mourning comes,_   
_You may feel all’s for naught,_   
_But remember well all that you’ve seen,_   
_And all that you’ve been taught._   
_For the Keys still need a Keeper,_   
_And the doors still guard their lands,_   
_The fate of worlds have now been left_   
_In the newest Doorman’s hands._   
_The Fates applaud, the Kingdoms bow,_   
_The song of Destiny hums,_   
_Now take a breath and steel yourself:_   
_Your coronation comes._

“What a funny little poem,” I murmured out loud. The man next to me, a frumpy looking gentleman in an overpriced sport coat, glanced down at the book in my hand then looked at me as if I was losing my mind.

I closed the book and put it away.

Sleep came fairly easily for the rest of the trip. Strangely enough, nothing tires a person out quite like the stress of not getting up for work every morning, or the worry of not pulling one’s own weight in the modern world. On top of traveling and the funeral I was exhausted, and even a nap on a moving train was a welcome respite.

Once I was off the train, in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, I asked around until I found somebody willing to sell me a ride miles out to the middler of nowherer. I was left at the beginning of an old dirt road that ran through the trees, locked up tight with a wrought iron gate. The letters “R” and “R” were sculpted at the top and painted gold. Rooster’s Run, I imagined.

It took five minutes to find the right key on the ridiculous ring of keys, and then I was trudging along under a canopy of thick green. It kept the August heat off my head, at least.

The road was straight and I could see it went on for miles, or at least for as far as the eye could see. I set down my suitcase and for the first time started to wonder if coming out here alone was really a good idea.

I took out my cell phone. Maybe I could call into town and pay for another ride back. Perhaps rent a car and come out myself, rather than being lost on a miles long road on a strange estate.

There was no signal.

“Of course,” I groaned. “Money coming out the gills and no cell service. The wi-fi is probably nonexistent too.”

“ _Buck-aw_.”

I jumped. While I’d been checking my phone a bird had appeared and wandered over to my feet: a rooster.

“Oh no. Actual chickens.” I didn’t know anything about farm animals. What if the place was called Rooster’s Run because it was a chicken farm?

“ _Buck buck. Buck_.”

The rooster made a clucking sound that seemed to be saying he was just as unimpressed with me.

“Oh, be quiet. Come here, rooster. Are you friendly?”

I leaned down to try and touch him, but he bobbed and waddled away from me. He went a few feet and disappeared into the bushes, leaving me back alone with my dilemma.

I had to wonder how a rooster got all the way out here in the first place. Then it dawned on me that maybe there was something nearby. A farmhouse, a chicken yard. Something that had estate transportation, perhaps. I grabbed my suitcase and pushed through the bushes where the rooster had disappeared.

Instead of the thick underbrush I was prepared to power through, the greenery ended very abruptly. I fell out in a pile along with my suitcase, onto well-maintained flagstones in front of a big, round fountain. Sitting up and looking around, I wondered if I’d hit my head.

I was looking at what had to be the main estate house. But there was no way it could be, the way it sprawled to my left would have put the house right out into the middle of the road where my driver had dropped me off and I had seen no such thing.

I jumped up and pushed back through the bushes to look. And pushed, and pushed, and…hit a brick wall where a brick wall had not been.

“Okay, you’re new,” I said to the wall. “Or I’m crazy. Maybe both.”

“Hey!” A male voice called from behind me, making me jump. “Who are you? What are you doing in the bushes?”

I did a little jiggling dance to turn around and fight my way back out of the greenery, sharp twigs tangling in my hair and pulling at my clothes. I was more than a little disheveled when I tripped out onto the flagstones, coming face to face with a concerned-looking man.

He was probably in his late thirties or early forties, with dark hair and strong features. He had a little bit of stubble and his hair was a mess, and his shirt was crooked by a button.

“Hi,” I greeted warily. “Wow, you look just as tired as me. Um, I’m Marissa? Marissa Tomlinson. Mortimer Bellkindle’s great niece, I just came out to get a look at the place…”

“Oh.” The man looked me up and down. He appeared very disappointed. “You’re kind of…small and…female.”

“Were you expecting a manly lumberjack with a name like Marissa?” I wondered.

“I wasn’t expecting a Marissa, everything Mort left only says “Mar.” I’m Florian, I’m the…groundskeeper here.”

pause before the word “groundskeeper” made me suspicious. I wondered if he was some kind of thief trying to move in on Uncle Mort’s stuff before his grave was even settled.

Florian picked up my suitcase, hefting it and frowning.

“Is this all you brought?”

“Yes, it’s all I had with me for the funeral.” I stopped just short of asking why Florian hadn’t attended. Maybe it would be weird to go to a funeral for your boss, if he really did work here.

Well you can’t live off this bit of stuff. I’ll get you the information for the shipping company we use, you can start getting everything moved.” He walked ahead of me as he spoke, leaving me scurrying after him into the house.

“Shipping company?”

“Well how else are you going to get all your things here?” Florian asked.

“Oh…no, no, no, I don’t plan to live here,” I clarified. “I’m just taking a look around. I have a life back in California, I can’t maintain an estate myself. I’ll probably end up having to sell it.”

“That’s a shame.” Florian didn’t sound like it was much of a shame at all. “And the towels were just about finished redoing their monograms.”

“The what?”

“Nothing.”

The foyer of the house could have been a room of its own. It was flanked by wide doorways that led into wide halls, each lined with huge windows on one side and doors to more rooms on the other. Ahead of us was a split spiral staircase, both sides leading up to one central hallway on the second floor. Florian led me straight ahead, between to the two stairways and down the third hallway of the first floor.

“This is the sitting room, this is the study,” he recited as we walked past open doorways. “The trophy room, the drawing room, the living room, the dining room, the formal dining room. The kitchen is all the way back there, just after the library. And this is the office.”

He stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. It had an ornate gold plaque with engraved lettering.

_Mr. Mortimer Bellkindle_   
_Official Doorman of Malidarthi_

“What’s Malidarthi?” I asked. I tried the door, it was locked.

“Here is Malidarthi,” Florian answered. “You need to use the key. It’s a gold colored one with red enamel.”

I flipped through the keys on the ring until I found the one he’d described. The lock clicked open easily when I used it, and the door swung open to reveal complete darkness. I started to reach for a light switch, but Florian stopped me.

“Just out of curiosity,” he wondered, “if you were to have a private office that you could decorate any way you wanted, what would it look like?”

“Me?”

I looked into the darkness and imagined what Uncle Mort’s office looked like. It was probably covered in clutter, lined with shelves full of old books. There would undoubtedly be a decanter of whiskey in here somewhere, and probably some old armchairs.

“White,” I decided. “White and gray. Clean, modern. Gray tile floors with soft white rugs. A sleek, shiny desk. Oh, and a huge fish tank on one wall.”

“You heard her,” Florian called into the empty office.

“How long have you been here alone?” I asked him, wary again. “And when did you start talking to yourself?”

“I’m not talking to myself.” Florian bowed sarcastically, motioning for me to go ahead into the room. “Ladies first.”

This trip was getting weirder and weirder. I backed into the room, keeping my eyes on the nutcase accompanying me, and flipped the light switch. The room was flooded with bright light, and when I turned to look I almost dropped the ring of keys in my hand.

White. Clean. Gray tile floors with thick, white shag rug. And on one side, taking up the whole wall, an aquarium filled with tropical fish.

“How…?”

I turned to look at Florian, but he seemed completely indifferent. He knocked on the open door with one knuckle, drawing my attention to the plaque.

The silvery plaque, attached to a white door with faceted glass windows.

_Ms. Marissa Tomlinson_   
_Official Doorwoman of Malidarthi_

“How did you do that?” I whispered. My voice sounded hoarse, colored with shock. I prided myself on being a woman who took things in stride, but this was a little too much.

“I didn’t do it, I’m not a Doorman,” Florian answered with a lazy shrug. “You’re the Doorwoman, you did it.”

“What is a Doorwoman?” I demanded. “Journals with no writing, roads and brick walls that move, doors that change when a person’s not looking! This doesn’t make any sense!”

“I think you should go spend some time at your desk,” Florian suggested. “The drawers will be locked, of course. I believe the key for those is blue.”

He nudged my suitcase into the room and pulled the door closed behind him. I was left alone in the room, accompanied only by the sounds of the sleek modern clock on the wall and the bubbling of the aquarium filter.

The desk, I found, was exactly what I’d imagined it to be. Elegant and white, with a glass desk topper to protect the surface. There was a vase of beautiful flowers on one corner, a stylish antique phone in white on the other. Filing bins, pen holders, all of the things I could ever need in a desk. And right in the middle, a typed sticky note.

THE WI-FI NAME IS ROOSTERRUN

THE PASSWORD IS SHOONERLOVESFISH&CHIPS

“Thank God there’s wi-fi,” I muttered, picking through the key ring again. I found a small silver key with blue enamel, and as Florian had guessed it fit the drawer locks perfectly.

There were office supplies and files, folders with curious names and even more curious contents. Maps, drawings, fantastical scribblings. I opened a top drawer and found an envelope addressed to me, heavy and stuffed full.

Inside was what looked like a keychain. It was flat and had wheels with numbers to turn, like a strange combination lock. But instead of letters all the wheels had numbers that were set to zero, and laid out in a pattern around imprinted text.

LAT: 00.000 LON: 00.000

DAT: 00:00:0000 TIM: 00:00

There was a keyhole under the number wheels. It was a very confusing little device.

Along with the keychain was a letter. It was on notebook paper, handwritten and dated four years ago.

My dear Marissa,

The date is January 22. You are 28 years old, and I am afraid I have wasted all opportunities given in your nearly three decades.

In the beginning it was, to put it rudely, because you were a little girl. The title of “Doorman” has been passed down only to boys, and the rest of the Doormen nearly laughed me out of council when I suggested you might be my new apprentice. Tradition has dictated until now that those born into this very interesting path be male, and they continue to look elsewhere for my eventual successor.

But I am 572 years old myself, and I have seen the world change. The keys pick their keeper, and the Keys of Malidarthi have chosen you to follow in my footsteps.

Beware, little hen, the job is dangerous and fatalities have been had. Though there can be only one Doorman in a generation there is always an apprentice born in his lifetime. You are the third such apprentice, chosen after the untimely demises of the first and second, and now the one that will have to take on the title without the benefit of any tutelage or training. For years I have tried to bring you here, to show you the secrets of the keys and the carousel, but life has always gotten in the way.

No Doorman knows how long he will live, but I feel in my bones that my time is coming soon. Shadows lurk on the horizon and the kingdoms grow dark around the edges. I will do my best to ensure that you do not inherit an uncleanable mess, but be wary just the same. Peace is an illusion, there is always deceit behind certain smiles. You are a smart girl, I have faith in you.

Know also that you will not be alone in your endeavors. For every Doorman there is an assistant, just as long-lived if not as skilled, and mine now passes on to you. Florian is young, as you are, but he has been by my side for two decades. His attitude can be infuriating but his experience is invaluable and his loyalty is unwavering.

Keep the keys. Guard the carousel. Defend Malidarthi.

Very Sincerely Yours,  
Mortimer Bellkindle

I folded the letter back up and put it in the drawer. The keychain that had come with it went into my pocket.

Fantastic. Strange. Mysterious. These were all words I had used over my life to describe Uncle Mort, but now they seemed to describe my situation instead.

Could this be real? Was this a dream? Was I still lying out on the ground, unconscious from hitting my head in the fall during chasing a rooster?

It couldn’t be real. I decided it was a dream, my life was too boring and too ordinary for something like this to fall into my lap.

As if on cue, my phone rang. It was my fiancé, Henry.

“Hey honey,” I greeted as I answered, surprised yet again. There had been no cell reception only half an hour earlier. Then again, this was a dream. “How is everything?”

“When is your trip over?” Henry asked bluntly. Which was pretty much how Henry always was. “I can’t find where you wrote everything down.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I groaned. “I meant to write it down, I really did…”

“But you didn’t. Unsurprising. So when is your trip over?”

“Um.” Even I had to think. I had one more night before my flight back, which I would be spending here at Rooster’s Run. “I should be home late tomorrow night.”

“Good, because we have four different appointments. The caterer wants us to look at menus and put down a deposit, we need to check out that one florist to see if he’s the one we want, and I booked us a cake tasting at that fancy place near my office.”

Wedding plans. I almost groaned again. Henry was so monotone and methodical about it all, he had completely stripped any wonder or enjoyment out of the process. He hadn’t even really proposed, just come home from work one day and declared we’d been living together long enough to start planning a wedding.

I did love Henry. Really, I did. But I was starting to wonder if I was marrying him because I wanted to marry him or because I didn’t have a job and needed him. I knew his interest in me wasn’t exactly fiery or passionate, he discussed our marriage like it was a good deal that would net him a good business partner.

That’s what we seemed to be these days. Business partners. Our apartment was our home base and my job was to provide the charisma he didn’t have, to help him wow his clients.

In all honesty, it wasn’t a terrible arrangement. It was comfortable, it was somewhat enjoyable. But it wasn’t a fairy tale either.

Henry was still going on and on, ticking off boxes on his checklist of things to go over with me. We needed to start looking at houses, he wanted to go further south. I only had three bridesmaids picked, I needed to find a fourth and a Maid of Honor. I hadn’t even looked at dresses yet, I needed to get my girls and my mother together and book a trip to a boutique.

While Henry talked, I walked. I left the office, swinging the big ring of keys on my wrist, and slowly walked through the house to get a look at everything. It might have been my imagination, but the living room furniture looked more modern when I passed it this time, and much of the old, dusty look of the house seemed much more sleek and clean.

The foyer had definitely been very dark with lots of wood. Now when I stepped out into it I was walking on marble tile and looking at light gray stone on the walls. There were more tables than I remembered as well, sporting fresh flowers in crystal vases.

I went up the stairs, into the central hallway where the two sets met at the top. It was long and empty, the walls lined with portraits that had name plates I could barely pronounce. At the end, by a set of double doors, there was a portrait of Uncle Mort on the right and an empty frame on the left.

The doors, of course, were locked.

I messed with the key ring, giving Henry the occasional “mmhmm” or “uh huh” he was looking for, and eventually I was rewarded with a soft click. The doors swung inward silently, and when I stepped into them I knew for certain that this was a dream.

The room was circular, far bigger than could have possibly fit inside any house, with a ceiling that seemed to stretch upward into eternity. Stars twinkled, galaxies swirled, comets shock across my view. The walls rose around me and split to come to an end in curved points, like I was standing on the inside of a crown.

Around the edge of the room were doors of all different shapes and sizes, housed in frames from simple wood to elaborate crystal.

“So what do you think?” Henry asked.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You’ve never…what?” He was perplexed. I couldn’t even remember what he’d actually asked me, I was so caught up in what I saw.

“I’m going to have to call you back.”

“But-“

“Later,” I insisted. I turned off the phone and shoved it in my pocket, walking further into the room.

The air felt like a fresh spring day, and there was a soft music coming from somewhere I couldn’t see. There were other sounds that came and went as I passed different doors; wind chimes, soft rain, waterfalls. All of the doors were different, but they all had one thing in common: they each had a shape carved above their keyholes.

I stopped at one door, tall and arched and red, with a diamond etched into it. A check on my key ring told me my suspicions were accurate when I found a red enameled key with the same shape.

I held my breath and gave it a try. The door unlocked and opened inward.

Mist rolled out around my feet and there was a cool, light breeze from inside. I hung the key ring on a small crystal protruding from the frame of the next door over, unwilling to risk losing them in what looked like a dark room, and took a few adventurous steps inside.

Light came from a source I couldn’t really see. Above me and beyond there was only black, but I could see my hands in front of my face just fine. The mist swirled as I passed through, rolling across the floor and dancing up at random in swirls and shapes. There where whispers on the air all around me, voices just out of range of hearing.

“Hello?” I called. “Is somebody there?”

Nothing but an echo of my own voice, but it sounded colder, more cruel. Like it was laughing at me. It made my skin crawl.

I turned to go back the way I’d come but after only a few steps I could tell something was wrong. I hadn’t gone very far at all, but the door I’d come through was nowhere in sight. Neither was the wall I knew it must have been set in. There was only empty, mist-filled space.

A new sound came from behind me, something that sounded like the skitter of many legs across the stone under my feet. The quick movements of something that had heard a snack wander into its web and was eager to close the trap.

I panicked and ran, picking a direction at random since they all looked the same and pouring on as much speed as I could muster. In some places the air felt frigid and dry, in others thick and soupy. I ran until I reached what appeared to be a stone wall, with a huge, heavy steel door lined in beams and rivets.

It was ajar a few feet, leaking light into the mist, and I threw myself through the opening without stopping to consider what might be on the other side. At this moment, anything was better than what may or may not be hidden in the swirling white behind me.

My feet scuffed along loose pebbles and gravel just on the other side, and I skidded to a stop before I slammed into more rock. Not a wall this time but an outcropping, one I dodged around and ducked down behind, huddling as small as I could to try and catch my breath.

The air was thick and warm here, with a trace scent of sulfur. The black rock was marked with veins of shimmering silver, and the sky above was a dark red. Two moons hung low in the sky, like an abstract desktop wallpaper from some fantasy artist website.

When I was sure I wasn’t being followed by anything on the other side of the door, I carefully stood up to look around. I could hear the faint cries of some kind of small animals up overhead, but when I looked up I saw things about the size of hawks that flew by so fast I couldn’t see any detail.

The rock around me wasn’t random. It was a path, cut into a mountainside to lead from the door to somewhere else. I followed it downward to what appeared to be a small hub, and when I turned in a circle I could see other paths leading up to other doors.

Like the room back at Rooster’s Run, which must have been the “Carousel” Mort had referred to, this was another great expanse of pathways to unknown destinations.

I was afraid, but I also felt a thrill. This couldn’t be real and yet I hoped it was, to see something so fantastic only to find it was just a figment of my sleeping imagination would be torture.

A vibration rocked the ground around me, sending small pebbles and stones bouncing. It was followed by another, and another, the slow, plodding footsteps of something very large. Something very large coming this way, and I did not want it to see me before I saw it.

I ran back the way I’d come, looking for somewhere to hide. About halfway up toward the door I’d come through there were some gouges in the wall, deep enough for me to get my feet into and climb upward. I went up as high as I could until I was kneeling on a shelf of rock, peering back down at the middle of the wheel of doors.

I held my breath and waited. Then I let that breath out and took another one, because the wait wasn’t really all that short. In fact, it started to feel like a small forever as I sat there, precariously balanced in the middle of a strange new world waiting to see what monstrosities might be wandering around.

A snort sounded behind me. I turned, slowly, to look at its source. What I found was an eye about a foot and a half tall, slitted and lizard-like, watching me.

I let out a string of swears that would have made my mother yell at me and scrambled away, up along the rock shelf that was barely wide enough to balance on. I scooted along until it narrowed too much and I had to drop down to the ground below, pressing myself back against the stone.

The vibrations came again, one after another, the sounds of the creature that had spotted me finishing it’s walk along the path down to the hub. Down to the center, where it would be able to look up and see me, where I would be trapped in this corridor of rock and be unable to escape.

Well, there was one escape. As horrible as it might be, I was going to have to go back through the door.

I started to creep back, slowly, trying not to make any more noise than necessary. Not that it would have made much of a difference, surely my footfalls were nothing compared to the giant monster approaching. The door was so close, just a few yards away, maybe I could dart through without being seen.

I looked up to gauge the distance, make sure there were no uneven spots in the ground for me to trip over. To my horror the door, my only escape, was slowly starting to swing closed.

“No!” I exclaimed before I could stop myself, darting toward it as fast as I could. The opening grew smaller and smaller, there was no way I was going to reach it before it closed completely…

A hand appeared, a very human hand, fingers gripping the edge of the door and pulling it open wider. Above the hand appeared a face, a very irritated looking face but a familiar one nonetheless. As the door opened wide enough, I flung myself through and threw my arms around a very surprised Florian who was standing on the other side.

“There you are!” He sounded exasperated, as if I were some wayward child. “Are you insane? Going through a door and leaving the keys…no armor, unarmed, do you have a death wish?”

“We have to go!” I hissed, pushing him away and shoving the door closed. It shut with a satisfying noise as the lock clicked into place.

“Uh oh. What did you do?” Florian asked, looking back at the door as I grabbed him and pulled him away. “Who did you talk to?”

“Nobody, but there’s monsters!” I insisted. “And there’s something out here in the mist…but the doors just seem to disappear and reappear at random so I don’t know how we’ll get back!”

Florian sighed. It was a long-suffering sound, as he planted his feet and brought me to a stop. He held up a ring of keys, my ring of keys that I’d left back in the carousel room.

“That’s why you can’t leave these. You can’t come into the Null without keys, the doors won’t show themselves unless you can open them. And if you hadn’t left the door back at home open you’d be done for, I’m not a Doorman so I can’t unlock the doors even if I have the keys.”

“But I never opened that door,” I turned back to look at the huge metal door with the rivets. Unlike the one I’d gone through from the carousel room, this one was still visible. “That one showed itself.”

“Then somebody else must have just come through it,” Florian reasoned. “Very world has its own Doorman, Marissa. Each Doorman guards a bank of doors that leads to the other worlds. This part of the Null is the corridor between Malidarthi and the Diamond Mountains…Cayman is the Doorman there and he’s not very friendly, I suggest we get back home and lock up in case he’s out here wandering.”

“I don’t even know where home is,” I admitted. “I ran for a good ten minutes, and I don’t even know which direction I came from.”

“I’ll guess that one.”

Florian pointed over my shoulder. I turned to look, and just a few yards away was the bright red door. Both it and the iron one were within view of each other.

Of course, now I held the keys. Perhaps the red door had been hiding from me because I hadn’t had them with me.

We approached the red door and I tried the key with the diamond etching. It opened and I practically fell through it, out into the beautiful carousel room I’d first left from.

“Oh thank God,” I fell to my knees, relieved, and almost kissed the tile floor. “Back in territory that is slightly less weird.”

Behind me, Florian closed the red door and it locked itself behind him. Ahead of me, between the open double doors, I saw something that was distinctly out of place.

“Florian?”

“Yeah?”

“Did Mort own a giant lizard?”

“A what?”

“A giant lizard.” I pointed. Just outside the carousel room, standing I the hall, was something that looked like a fat komodo dragon with longer legs and leathery wings. “You know. Like that one.”

“Aw crap,” Florian grimaced. “He must’ve come through the door while it was left open. Cayman’s going to murder us.”

Given that I’d already been informed that Cayman was not a very nice man, I didn’t want to ask if Florian was being literal. And I didn’t want to be murdered any more than I wanted a giant lizard running amok in the house.

I got to my feet as smoothly as I could, but it was still too fast. The lizard got spooked and scurried off down the hallway, crashing into a table of flowers and pulling it down to the floor in a broken mess before disappearing down the stairs.

We ran out after it, Florian pulling the doors to the carousel room closed behind us. I stopped at the broken table to kick the glass from the vase out of the way and picked up something that didn’t look like it belonged.

“This looks like a collar.”

I held up the leather strip. It had a bunch of strange symbols carved into it.

“Shooner,” Florian said.

“Bless you.”

“No.” He smacked me in the back of the head. I had to admit, I probably deserved it a little. “That’s the language of the Diamond Mountains, phonetically it says “shooner.”

“That sounds familiar,” I mused.

“Good, think on it while we try to catch a dragon,” Florian advised. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the hall.

We split up, Florian going down the right stairs and down the right hall and me going to the left. I ran about ten feet when it hit me.

“SHOONER LOVES FISH AND CHIPS!” I yelled, turning and running back.

“What?” Florian’s voice echoed back down the hall he’d gone down. I could see him stopped a few doors down, looking confused.

“Shooner loves fish and chips! It’s the wi-fi password!”

“We don’t have wi-fi,” Florian answered.

“The new office does,” I assured him. I grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the foyer, then down the third hall toward the office. “How long has Cayman been a Doorman?”

“Um,” this time it was Florian who finally hit a question he couldn’t answer right away. “Beats me. Fifty years? A hundred?”

“Long enough for Uncle Mort to know him,” I surmised. We reached the office and I used the red key, letting us in. “Long enough for maybe a visit or two. Maybe long enough for a small dragon to be brought through on occasion.”

“Shuneen!” Florian stopped in the doorway and smacked himself in the forehead. “That’s Shuneen, “Shooner” is his nickname! He was only a baby last time I saw him, and that was before Mort got sick! Of course he’d run from us, Mort’s the only one he’d recognize here.”

He crossed the office in a few bounds and threw aside a decorative white curtain I hadn’t even noticed was there. There was a door in the wall here, plain white.

“Where’s that lead?” I asked.

“It’s a closet,” Florian answered. He started going through shelves. “For now. We need the master lock.”

I started looking too, on the other side of the room. On shelves, in drawers, even in the small cabinet under the fish tank. By the time we met in the middle there were things thrown everywhere. But I hadn’t found anything that looked like a lock.

“It’s not here,” Florian grumped. “It’s always here. It should have been with the keys. The keys, the journal, and the lock.”

I had the keys and the journal was in my bag, but I hadn’t been given any lock. Unless…

“Wait, is it this?” I asked, pulling the strange keychain out of my pocket. “This thing with the number wheels?”

Florian heaved a sigh as he took it. He didn’t have to say anything for me to read his expression. My lack of knowledge was very disappointing to him.

“Yes, that would be it.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I shot back. “I’ve never been told about any of this, everything I’m seeing here is brand new!”

“Well maybe you should have put in a little more effort to accept an invitation out here while Mort was still alive,” he said acidly. “A few days on Christmas away from your complacent factory job wouldn’t have hurt.”

I wanted to kick him in the shin, but he was kind of right. There had been nothing truly pressing keeping me from accepting Uncle Mort’s invitations to Rooster’s Run, it had mostly just been my own laziness and the very wrong assumption that there would always be time for it “later.”

Maybe that was why Florian had such an attitude problem. He had been at Mort’s side for twenty years and had lost his boss and probably friend. And in all that time, I could never be bothered to even visit.

Florian turned all the dials on the master lock, filling in numbers and handing it to me.

“Put it on the door, then use the black key.”

“What are the numbers?” I asked. I went over to the closet and pressed the flat back of the lock to it. To my surprise, it stayed.

“LAT and LON are latitude and longitude,” Florian answered while I fumbled through the key ring. “DAT is date, TIM is time.”

I found the black key and stuck it in the keyhole beneath the coordinates and time. As soon as it unlocked Florian pushed the door open and shoved me through.

I stumbled out onto a city street, nearly knocking two women over. As I apologized profusely and turned back to glare at Florian, I found him following me…out of an antique shop. On his way out he pulled the master lock off the door and handed it back to me.

“Where are we?” I gasped, looking around. There was a double decker bus going by, and the storefronts were all much older than anything I’d seen in Pennsylvania.

“Those are the coordinates for London, England,” Florian said. He almost seemed a little bit proud. “After a few years you’ll start memorizing the addresses for places. The date is today, 2pm local time. We need a chip shop.”

That wasn’t hard to find, and within fifteen minutes we were walking out with fried fish and french fries wrapped in paper to soak up the grease. I’d only had American currency on me, but Florian had been carrying some pounds in his wallet.

He led me down a side street, to what looked like some houses, and picked the first one that looked like nobody was home.

“Change all the numbers back to zeroes,” he instructed, “and slap the lock on a door. All zeroes for the coordinates is the home address for Rooster’s Run. Oh, and it doesn’t really matter what you put in for the date or time, the master lock will only take you back to the exact date and time you left when you go home.”

I obediently set all the wheels to zero and pressed the master lock to the closest door. It stuck and I used the black key, and a moment later we were stepping back into the office at the estate.

It had cleaned itself up in our absence. That was very handy.

“Okay, come on, we need to hurry,” Florian urged, running out of the room. I followed him back down the hall and up the stairs, down the long hall to the carousel room. The doors here all seemed to lock again after a set amount of time, and he needed me to open them.

Florian laid the fish and chips out on the floor in the middle of the carousel room, then we crept back to flank the doorway and wait. We each leaned with our backs against a door, propping them open and sitting in silence.

It was almost fifteen minutes before I heard a shuffling noise in the hallway. I looked over at Florian, who put a finger to his lips to tell me to be quiet, and we remained frozen in silence. Slowly, warily, a little dragon head poked into the carousel room.

Shuneen didn’t look left or right, his eyes were focused in on the fish and chips. His tail flicked a few times, as if he were considering the danger, then he flung himself forward to tackle the treat.

“Now!” Florian hissed.

We both jumped up and pushed the doors closed, and the slamming sound startled Shuneen. He quickly ran to the far end of the room, which was where our plan sort of fell short.

“The room’s too big,” Florian lamented. “We can chase him for hours and not be able to close in on him.”

“Then we’ll lure him,” I decided. “Stop looking so overly aggressive. Try a smile and maybe he won’t run.”

“I don’t smile,” Florian said flatly.

“So I see. Fine, come hold the door.”

I unlocked the red door and Florian stood by it to play doorstop. It was now the only exit the little dragon had and I hoped to lure him in. I picked up the fish and chips, waving the packet back and forth in front of me and trying to fan the smell in Shuneen’s direction.

“C’mon Shooner! Come on, little guy!” I called, slowly backing toward the door. I tried to sound pleasant and inviting. “Nom nom nom, fried, breaded fish! Deep fried potatoes! Yum!”

He seemed interested. I held the food down at his snout level and slowly backed toward the door. Gradually, the little dragon followed. Soon he was stepping out into the swirling mist of the Null, and Florian was closing the door behind us.

I kept backing up and leading Shuneen further. The door to the Diamond Mountains wasn’t far, and I wanted to get him as close as possible. I kept backing up until I backed into something, something far more narrow and soft than a door.

I looked over my shoulder. My gaze fell on a reddish brown snout, then traced back and up, to the huge, reptilian eyes that I recognized from the ledge of the black rock mountains.

There was nowhere really to run, and even if I reached the door back home there was certainly no time to unlock it. This was it, this was the end. Which was a bit agitating, since it had really only just started.

“Shuneen.”

The voice that spoke was deep and rumbling, almost as much of a purr as a voice. The little dragon in front of me blinked up at the big one behind me, then quickly snatched a piece of fish out of my hands before running by to hide under him.

“Rhyhir, thank heavens,” Florian came to stand beside me, looking up at the huge creature. “I was sure it would be Cayman that came looking for him. I do not need to deal with him.”

“No, Cayman is back in his lair, fuming that he can’t find his keys,” the dragon—Rhyhir—answered. He sounded almost amused. “It seems his very young apprentice ran off with them and let himself through a door. I found the set out in the Null.”

He raised a claw, jingling a set of keys that were giant compared to my own, but the perfect size for the huge doors in the Diamond Mountains’ hub.

“You’ve saved me a lot of trouble, Florian. From one Assistant to another, I don’t relish having to chase a lost young Doorman-to-be through the Null.”

“I feel your pain,” Florian answered, casting a glance in my direction. I tried to look suitably chastised. “Rhyhir, this is Marissa. She’s taken Mort’s place. I hate to be the one to have to tell everyone, but he’s recently passed through to the nether.”

“No,” Rhyhir’s voice was pained, and for a giant lizard his face was very expressive. “For three-hundred years I’ve enjoyed Mort’s visits to the Mountains…how?”

“The Violet Plague,” Florian answered softly. “He quarantined himself last year, as soon as he knew. He’s spent the time getting his affairs in order, and writing letters to his friends. There’s one for you, but I was never able to come through the door myself to bring it. I’m sorry, I don’t have it with me right now.”

“At the coronation, perhaps,” Rhyhir rumbled. He lowered his head in my direction, bowing as best as a dragon could manage. “A pleasure to meet you, Madame Doorwoman of Malidarthi. May you have long years and a peaceful watch. And, if you don’t mind my saying, may Connar of Diordan wet his pants when he sees you.”

Rhyhir chuckled at his own joke, deep and throaty, and stood back up at his full height. His tail swished and he looked back at the door.

“As much as I wish we could stay and talk, the Null is not the place,” he sighed. “And Shuneen will soon be missed. Cayman is an unwelcoming old doddard, but the path to Shalahan is always open to all. May we meet there soon, under much more pleasant circumstance.”

“May we meet there soon,” Florian agreed formally, bowing his head.

I followed his lead, and Rhyhir turned away from us to the giant iron door. He passed the huge key ring to Shuneen, being unable to unlock the door himself, and once it was open the two dragons disappeared through.

It closed behind them with a sharp bang, and I let us back through the bright red door into the carousel room.

“What just happened?” I asked as we stepped back into the hall, closing the big double doors behind us.

“Cayman is the Doorman of the Diamond Mountains,” Florian explained as we walked down the hall. “Rhyhir is his Assistant, like I was to Mort. Shuneen is his apprentice.”

“But they’re dragons.”

“Everyone in the Diamond Mountains is a dragon,” Florian answered. “Just like everyone in Malidarthi is human, and everyone in Shalahan is a dwarf. Human beings aren’t the end all and be all of creation.”

We reached the office and I retrieved my suitcase, and now Florian led me to a staircase at the back of the house I hadn’t seen. It took us up to the second floor, to a normal stretch of hallway with a normal stretch of rooms.

“This is the master bedroom,” he told me, opening the door for me. This door seemed much plainer than all the others, not magic or mystical in any way. The room was nice, but very plain and empty. Cleaned out for its new occupant. “My room is three doors down if you need anything.”

“Thanks. Um…this coronation, what is it?” I recalled the same thing being mentioned in the journal, in the poem in the first few pages.

“It’s an event,” Florian answered, pausing in the hallway. “Doormen live for hundreds of years, a new one taking over doesn’t happen often. When a new one does come along they hold a big gathering to meet all the others and be recognized. You go through all the pomp and hazing and they formally welcome you.

“Well, not you,” he added. “You have a life in California, after all.”

“Yeah,” I agreed dully, looking down at the ring of keys. “So if—when I leave, who takes over then?”

“When Mort died, a new Apprentice was born somewhere,” Florian shrugged, glancing down the hall indifferently. “The keys will find him. Or her. And instead of training you, I’ll just train them instead, no big deal. Then when you pass away someday, they’ll become the next Doorman and find the next Apprentice. And so on and so forth.”

“Right. Life goes on,” I agreed. “Well, thanks for the adventure, at least.”

“Uh huh.”

“Goodnight.”

“Sure.”

Florian disappeared down the hall, leaving me to my own devices. The summer sun was still in the sky despite the late hour, painting the trees outside my window gold and bright as I kicked off my shoes and fell onto the bed.

“This was a good dream,” I decided, closing my eyes.

They were only closed for a second, or so it seemed, before the shrill ring of my phone was waking me up. I rolled over and fought it out of my pocket, noting with some surprise that I had been lying here for almost ten hours. It had been a wonderful sleep, peaceful and uninterrupted.

Until now.

I sighed at the familiar image on the call screen and glanced out the window, where the sun was now brushing the tops of the trees in a very different way from when last I looked.

“Hey Henry,” I yawned. “It’s like four in the morning there, why are you up?”

“You were supposed to call me back.” Charming as ever, straight to the point as always. “Honestly Marissa, would it kill you to keep one promise in a timely manner in your life? It’s not like I’m asking you to take on a ton of responsibility…”

He just kept going. And going. And going. I didn’t even need to answer, he didn’t need to be encouraged. And somewhere in his running diatribe I started to realize I didn’t need to answer because I was just the sounding board. I was an interchangeable piece in Henry’s life.

I realized I didn’t want that. Not for myself, and not for him. I deserved better than to be his supporting actress, and he deserved to wake up next to somebody who inspired him instead of exasperating him.

I hung up the phone, and turned it off.

Florian was downstairs in the grand kitchen, reading the day’s newspaper over some marmalade-slathered toast. He looked up as I came in.

“Sleep well?” He asked. “I have the car ready whenever you’re ready to go. It’ll have to be soon, if you’re going to get back to the airport in time for your flight.”

“Oh, um, I think I can delay my flight,” I supposed. I sat at the table and took an orange out of the bowl of fruit there, picking at the peel. “So, about that shipping company you mentioned yesterday…”

“For moving your things.” He didn’t even look up from the paper.

“Yeah, that one. Do you think I could get the number?”

“Sure.” Still not even a glance. He just turned the page and perused the next. But I thought I saw one corner of his mouth turn up in the tiniest of smiles “So should the new monograms on the towels be staying, then?”

I didn’t want to say yes, but I also didn’t want to say no. I went with the middle ground.

“For a while.”  
“Good. I’ll get a catalog from the printer in town, you can look at invitations in your free time.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to do anything that has to do with the wedding,” I declined, frowning down at my orange. “I think the wedding is cancelled.”

“Wedding? Weddings are nothing,” he snorted softly. “Anyone can plan a wedding. There’s something much more important to plan than a wedding.”

Florian smiled, ever so slightly, more of a smirk than anything. Like he knew something I didn’t, or understood some fundamental truth I had yet to grasp.

“A coronation.”


End file.
